“Um, I'm Ponder Stibbons. A wizard. And he's a wizard, too.”
“He's got no clothes on!”
“I could get him to have a bath, if you like,” said Ponder, slightly hysterically. “He always puts on an old green dressing gown when he's had a bath.”
Magrat relaxed a bit. No one who sounded like that could be much of a threat, except to themselves.
“Whose side are you on, Mr. Wizard?”
“How many are there?”
“Oook?”
“When I get off this horse,” said Magrat, “it'll bolt. So can you ask your . . . friend to let go of the bridle? He'll be hurt.”
“Oook?”
“Um. Probably not.”
Magrat slid off. The horse, relieved of the presence of iron, bolted. For about two yards.
“Oook.”
The horse was struggling to get back on its feet.
Magrat blinked.
“Um, he's just a bit annoyed at the moment,” said Ponder. “One of the . . . elves . . . shot him with an arrow.”
“But they do that to control people!”
“Um. He's not a person.”
“Oook!”
“Genetically, I mean.”
Magrat had met wizards before. Occasionally one visited Lancre, although they didn't stay very long. There was something about the presence of Granny Weatherwax that made them move on.
They didn't look like Ponder Stibbons. He'd lost most of his robe and, of his hat, only the brim remained. Most of his face was covered in mud, and there was a multicoloured bruise over one eye.
“Did they do that to you?”
“Well, the mud and the torn clothes is just from, you know, the forest. And we've run into-”
“Ook.”
“-over elves a few times. But this is when the Librarian hit me.”
“Oook.”
“Thank goodness,” Ponder added. “Knocked me cold. Otherwise I'd be like the others.”
A foreboding of a conversation to come swept over Magrat.
“What others?” she snapped.
“Are you alone?”